A Snapshot in Time

08Jul08

It takes a lot of time to build up the courage to write something meaningful in a public space…you tend to feel more at ease with funny list or a goofy habit or breaking news because those are things that aren’t diving deep into your psyche but kind of treading in the shallow areas. I can say that, seeing as my last post was in April, I’ve built up enough courage to finally write one more thought-provoking posts I conjured. I actually had written a post that I thought was smart, but realized last minute…it was very useless. So this was my new idea:

Think back to 5 years ago. Can you remember how different you looked? How different your music taste was? How much you were enamored by someone? What movies you watched and what friends you met? Life seems so important at every moment but when recollecting on them later, you really feel like it is so different than you are now. People make time capsules with objects, to help them remember how things were back in 19xx. But no one ever thinks to make a time capsule for themselves. Some conglomeration of their thoughts, characteristics, actions and feelings at a certain moment in a certain time to be read 5 years later.

This is my personal time capsule, to be re-read by me in 5 years:

• The books you’re currently reading: I Am Legent by Robert Matheson, The Game by Neil Strauss.
• You’re not dating anyone, and haven’t had a real girlfriend since high school (5+ years ago), who you still try to talk to because she’s still a good friend and genuinely awesome. You have met and talked to several new girls since then. You love to flirt and go on first dates.
• You live in Toledo, OH, getting a M.S. that you don’t want, in a field of study you’ve recently decided to leave. You don’t want to be a doctor, nurse, researcher, professor or physician’s assistant. Medicine isn’t for you. It’s impossible to enjoy it as a lifestyle, career, profession, even thought. You want to enjoy your youth.
• You want to live in a city again. You’re leaving Toledo in less than a month and then moving to a city (TBA) and hoping to start a job. You want to be in a downtown area. You have no clue what the next year holds.
• While you’re excited to leave Toledo, you’re leaving good friends. A childhood (best) friend you’ve known your whole life and several amazing friends that have been awesome and helpful at all times. This scares you, it took a while to make good friends.
• You still drink, regularly and sometimes heavily (but never alone and only when partying).
• Your parents live in your hometown in Ohio with your brother, who is leaving in August for college on the west coast. You also have two sisters, one on the east coast and one moving to the south. You currently feel like the lowest on the totem pole, but this isn’t a new feeling.
• You love everyone in your family, extended and immediate, unconditionally.
• You’re hair style changes everyday, but is currently a half-faux hawk. You have contacts, glasses and shave about once a week. You rock a soul-patch under your lip.
• You have four best friends. Two on the west coast, one in Toledo and one in Chicago. All four of them make you wish you could be better. You envy them all in different ways.
• You think about the past often, wishing to change significant events in your life. You’re sure you’ve made a lot of mistakes but you’ve grown a lot. You still wish for change.
• You can dole out lots of advice and almost always have an answer to a problem. You like that people come to you with problems and issues and always want to help, regardless of the person.
• You’ve never been in love.
• You’ve never had your heart broken, but broken at least one heart.
• You love to travel. You leave almost every weekend to some location, near or far, and love living out of your duffel bag. You’re decent at meeting new people, easy to talk to, and you try to be funny. Sometimes they laugh, sometimes they stare awkwardly (that’s what she said).
• You listen to everything you can get your hands on. This includes some annoying music that you’d never tell anyone you own. Current favorite song: Don’t Touch Me (The Travis Barker Remix) by Busta Rhymes and Travis Barker. You like opera.
• You love to dance. You haven’t done it well in a while, and have lost a lot of skill. Regardless, hip hop is your favorite style but you’ve experienced swing, salsa, contemporary, bollywood, bhangra, raas, krump and liquid (rave).
• You don’t have a favorite color.
• You love computers…software, hardware, IT, whatever it is…it’s fun to you. You’re a huge nerd who plays video games and reads digg.com regularly. You want to do it forever.
• You love sports. Rafael Nadal just ended Roger Federer’s streak at Wimbledon and you caught the end of it. It was epic. You spent an hour watching videos on espn.go.com. You started playing tennis and basketball again, but you suck at both. Go Buckeyes, Wildcats, Cavs and Browns.
• You miss a lot of people. Your friends, your enemies, your acquaintances, your family, the random girl you talk to at the bar. When someone asks you how your life is, the usual reply is “boring”.
• You love all types of food. Japanese, Mexican, Indian, Chinese, American…whatever. Sushi and your mom’s Rajma and rice is your favorite dish.
• You love change. You love new experiences, the more wild the better. You have one tattoo (getting a new one in a few months), have sky dived and will be getting a motorcycle license in the next year if it kills you (bad phrase to use here). Adrenaline is your anti-drug.
• If you could classify yourself it one word, it’s “wtf”. You hate that question.
• You have a lot of principles, proverbs and ideas you stick closely to. You hate backhanded behavior and disrespect. You have a clear life philosophy of “enjoy shit, it only happens once.”
• You’re very religious, which is odd to many people bc of the way you act. You read, pray twice a day, and are genuinely intrigued with what the f*** we’re supposed to do with these gifts called life.
• Facebook is the devil, but secretly the greatest invention ever. You want to beg Mark Zuckerberg for the hours of your life you lost, because he can probably afford it.
• You drive a Lexus IS 250 AWD, but have to drive it everywhere because no one walks in Toledo. It’s red. You’ve named it Shakti.
• You have two names.  They are two different people.  Abhishek and Anshu.  You go by both everyday.  Sometimes it confuses you but sometimes you really enjoy it.
• You don’t have a real wild fashion sense anymore. Sometimes you go old school and switch it up, but essentially you just dress to be comfortable.
• You turn 23 in less than a week. You hate your birthday and wish you could skip it.
• One of your close friends in married, but several are recently engaged. You don’t want to ever get married or have children. You’re stubborn with this decision but ultimately the reason is deeper than you’d share on a blog. You’re still excited for them.
• You don’t like what you see when you look at a mirror.
• You don’t remember the last time you were really proud of yourself, but find that you’re always proud of those close to you.
• One of your best friends is swimming in the 100m Butterly at the Beijing Olympics for India.
• You like going to the gym, like how it makes you feel, but hate the feeling of losing all your energy when sprinting or lifting. You always want more.
• You have very little shame and have done lots of embarrassing things. You don’t give a sh** though.
• You’ve been up all night to reset your sleep cycle, which you constantly ruin.
• You’re favorite movies are Se7en, Star Wars (all six, regardless), Boondock Saints, Gandhi, Harold and Kumar (guilty pleasure), Grandma’s Boy (another guilty pleasure), 300 and The Shawshank Redemption.
• You watch the TV Shows 30 Rock, House, Scrubs, Avatar and Family Guy and reruns of Friends and Arrested Development.
• You share a lot of random information you read online to the people you see everyday.
• You blog like this because you want to share some of the jumbled mess of your mind, but you’re surprisingly closed off to most people. You’ve been referred as a closed book once in the past 6 months.
• You love to read and watch people. You like to think you know a lot about both. You’ve proven you’re not always wrong.
• F*** Bush. You like Barack Obama but had other choices in mind (not Hillary though). You’re best described as libertarian.
• You’re afraid your parents are growing old. You don’t want to see them frail. They occupy your two greatest fears: losing them and disappointing them.
• You would refer to yourself and a lover, not a fighter. You’ve also never been in a real fight and it bothers you a little.
• You think you’re smart, but that has also lead you to realize that, while everyone thinks they’re special, you’re more than likely doomed to mediocrity.
• In all honesty, you know you’re lucky and the majority of your thoughts, feelings and problems are privileges of people who are well off. While it seems superfluous to even bother when there are people who suffer for real, you’re still living a life that you don’t want to cheapen with the bare minimum of worry and though. You want to explore and enjoy every thought you can, just because you can. People who suffer in India, Darfur, Iraq, America, Europe, Africa, etc. are always in your prayers.
• You’re going to want to change this in the months after you write it. Don’t.

What You Look Like Now

I’m saving this as a word file too, in case this blog goes down/no one blogs anymore/I somehow lose this. It’s pretty obvious to me that, in this extremely young life of mine, 5 years will be a large change in my life. In 2003, I know this would be an entirely different set of ideas running through my head. I probably would have also wondered who in the hell Mark Zuckerberg was.

If you feel like criticizing and critiquing and questioning me (all alliteration aside), please feel free to do so. My life is a dry erase board that can be edited, added to and always changed. It’s a very personal post, but there are obviously things that are not shared. I’m ok with that, because if they’re that personal I’ll remember them. Try it for yourself. Writing out every important thought you can think of is very liberating (even if you don’t share it).

As for me, I’ll be back to this a lot in the next few months, but also for sure in 5 years. One thing to tell my balding, annoyed older self: try something new tomorrow. And jsk from me to future me.

Filed under: future, life, past, relationships, thoughtful, time capsule   |  2 Comments
Tags: future, life, thoughtful, time capsule